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The Call Sheet sifts through the day's glut of Hollywood news to find the stories even non-industry types care about. Today: Rupert Murdoch gets the movie treatment, Disney resurrects an amphibian, and Charlie Sheen is, well, winning.
A British production company has acquired the rights to Good Times, Bad Times, a nonfiction book about the dark side of Esther Rolle Rupert Murdoch's relationship with Sunday Times editor Harold Evans (who wrote the book). So it's a newspapery thing about how awful Rupert Murdoch is! Meaning some actor is going to play Rupert Murdoch. A young Rupert Murdoch. Well, young-ish. The central action of the story takes place about thirty years ago, so Murdoch was what, 160? 170? It's hard to measure his age in our earth years, but it's somewhere around that. Anyway, the point is that someone will play Mr. Murdoch and it will be very interesting to see who that is. Any suggestions? We're going to go with Geoffrey Rush or this guy. [Variety]
You've heard of the movie The Wind in the Willows. And you've heard of the Disney ride based on that movie, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, which the park got rid of fifteen years ago. Well now get ready for Mr. Toad's Wild Ride: The Movie. Yup, Disney is putting that project together, which will be one of those hideous live action/CGI mash-up monsters that nobody likes but that do insanely well. So insanely well, in fact, that we can probably anticipate Mr. Toad's Wild Ride: The Ride sometime very soon! Or would it be The Wind in the Willows: The Ride? Just to keep with the whole palindromic thing? Who knows. The point is, Disney got rid of the ride, is now turning it into a movie, and who the hell knows maybe that means they'll turn it back into a ride. It's like a whole microcosm of the circle of life over there at Disney, huh? And I guess it would be, seeing as they invented that phrase. Happy riding, Mr. Toad. And happy talking to a CGI nothing for four months, whoever gets cast as the human lead but probably Jim Parsons. [Deadline]